


Sweet Dreams, Derek

by JoMouse



Series: Sterek Bingo 2020 [6]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Hale Fire (Teen Wolf), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Human, Barista Stiles Stilinski, Don't copy to another site, First Meetings, Insomnia, Insomniac Derek Hale, M/M, Sterek Bingo, Sterek Bingo 2020, sbinsomnia, sbmadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:28:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24707611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoMouse/pseuds/JoMouse
Summary: Stiles' new favorite customer comes into the coffee shop one night, but something isn't right.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Series: Sterek Bingo 2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1737445
Comments: 20
Kudos: 258





	Sweet Dreams, Derek

**Author's Note:**

> Greetings and Salutations.
> 
> The Sterek Bingo card was finally posted while I slept last night and I was two squares away from a Bingo, so despite working all day, I managed to get this completed just under the wire. 
> 
> Unfortunately, my dear beta [Marie](HTTP://quietzap.tumblr.com) lives on the other side of the word and had to sleep, so she was only able to read over the first half of this, so if there's any glaring spelling or grammatical errors, let me know.
> 
> Hope you enjoy this, I had a bit of fun writing it.
> 
> xx-Joey
> 
> Don't know 'em. Don't own 'em. Don't show 'em.

Stiles sat behind the counter, his textbook open in front of him, as the quiet of the coffee shop flowed around him. He’d turned the radio off earlier, the tinny-sounding muzak that the owner insisted on running for ambiance poking holes inside his brain. The bells above the door jangled startling him enough to send him off the stool and to the floor, barely managing to catch himself before he’d completely hit his ass on the tile.

He glanced up, unsurprised, to see his regular late-night visitor. The man had been coming into the coffee shop every night for the past week, looking progressively worse as each shift passed. The first night, he’d been attractive enough that Stiles had attempted flirting with him only to be rebuffed because of course someone as good looking as this man would have no interest in an awkward college student. As the nights passed, the man had become less verbal, his movements slower and the circles underneath his eyes growing darker. Even his beard had gone from artful stubble to near mountain man so rapidly that Stiles would think it was fake if he weren’t sure he’d watched it growing one night.

“The usual?” he called as he pulled himself to stand straight behind the counter. The man jumped, his shoulders tensing as his eyes met Stiles’.

“What do you mean?” he asked, the most words he’d said in the past couple of days combined. His face was pale, the bags standing out even more, and his eyes darted around before coming back to Stiles. “Who are you?”

“Stiles,” he responded, pointing to his name tag. “The barista?” he continued when there was no recognition on the man’s face. “Been here every night this week?”

The man looked about five seconds away from bolting out the door and didn’t look capable of staying upright for long so Stiles hurriedly made his regular coffee order. The whole time he was working on it, he kept one eye on the man who was pacing the length of the coffee shop, looking over his shoulder towards the door and then back towards Stiles.

“Derek?” he called, suddenly remembering the man’s name from the first night as his hand automatically scrawled it on the side of the cup. 

“How do you know my name?” Derek growled, rushing to the counter and slamming his hands down on it with enough force to shake the glass jars full of biscotti, knocking one off of the edge where it shattered against the tile.

The noise caused Derek to back up, still looking panicked as he raced out the door, pushing past Mason, Stiles’ replacement.

Without thinking, Stiles leapt over the counter. “You can have all my tips for leaving you like this,” he said, hurrying out the door after Derek.

He looked both ways and saw him darting around a corner and as he ran after him, he started to wonder what he was getting himself into and pulled his phone out to call his dad. He answered on the first ring.

“Hey, kiddo, what’s up?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure,” Stiles told him. “You know that guy I told you has been coming into the shop every night this week?” His father made a sound of acknowledgment and he heard background noise become muted and figured he must be at work and went into his office. “He came in tonight and he’s acting really weird. Like Eichen House weird and he looks like he hasn’t slept since the first time I saw him.”

“Are you running?” 

“I’m trying to follow him. He freaked out when I called his name and knocked a glass jar off the counter and when it shattered he booked it,” Stiles explained, slowing down when Derek did and ducking into an alley when he looked around him.

The noise from his father’s side of the phone got loud again. “You’re following an unstable person in the middle of the night? Have you learned nothing in your lifetime of being my son?”

“I’m pretty good at tailing a suspect,” Stiles joked and his father grunted at him and he heard the cruiser’s siren cut on. 

“Where are you?” 

He kept his dad on the phone after giving him his location and spotted Derek ducking into one of the older buildings on the edge of town. He considered following him inside but knew his father really would kill him if he tried that, so he leaned against the wall by the door and waited for his dad to arrive.

He heard the sirens first and at the same time a shout from inside the building. He waved at his dad as he pulled up to the curve before racing into the building and up the stairs where loud crashing could be heard. A door at the top of the stairs stood open and he could hear a woman shouting Derek’s name as he came through the door and found Derek in a corner of a kitchen space behind an overturned table, a knife in his outstretched hand and absolute terror on his face.

A woman was just inside the door and she let out a wild shriek when she saw Stiles. “Who are you?”

“Stiles,” he said, pointing to his nametag again and turning to focus on Derek who was staring at him, eyes wide but not quite as wild as they had been when he’d left the coffee shop. “Hey, Derek.” The hand holding the knife wavered and Stiles glanced at the woman who had a phone in her hand. “The Sheriff is on his way upstairs.”

“What?” Derek asked, the knife clattering to the ground and Stiles turned to find him climbing onto the kitchen counter, clawing at the windows. “No. No. No. I’m not going back.”

“Okay, what the fuck?” Stiles said, aiming the question at the woman as his dad came through the door with his gun drawn, sighing when he got inside and putting the gun away and turning to the woman.

“Hi, Laura,” he greeted.

“Sheriff,” the woman said, a tight smile on her face. “Sorry to bother you again.”

“He was doing so well,” he said. “What happened?”

“I’m not sure. I didn’t even know something was going wrong until he called me a few hours ago and sounded...off.” She frowned at Derek who was still trying to climb through the window. “He looks like he isn’t sleeping again.

“I thought he had medication for that,” the Sheriff said. “I also thought he wasn’t living alone.” 

“The doctor cleared him a few weeks ago,” Laura told him. “And he was doing so well.”

Stiles was only half-listening as he made his way across the floor towards the kitchen counter. Derek had stopped scrabbling at the window when he caught him moving closer and was watching him with a strange expression on his face.

“Hey, Derek,” he said. “I’m Stiles.” He grinned when Derek pointed at the name tag and jerked his hand back towards his chest when Stiles took another step closer. “Do you remember me, now?”

“Coffee shop,” he said after a minute of silence and pointed to the garbage can that had been knocked over, several cups from the shop fanned out around it.

“Shit, Derek, have you been drinking all this coffee?” Laura asked, moving to the mess on the floor and picking up a cup, sniffing at it, and making a face. “How many shots of espresso?”

“Two per cup,” Stiles said, stumbling back from the force of the glare that Laura turned on him. “He always drank one cup at the shop and took one to go.”

“Derek, you know caffeine counteracts your meds,” Laura chastised. “Why would you drink so much?”

“The barista is cute,” Derek told her, holding a hand in front of his mouth like Stiles couldn’t hear what he was saying. “And he talked to me.” Stiles choked as Laura rolled her eyes and his father laughed behind him.

“Well, I think you have this under control,” the Sheriff said. “Son, do you want a ride back to your Jeep?”

“Yeah, I guess,” he said, watching Laura talk Derek down from the counter. He wanted to say goodbye because he was pretty sure he’d never see him again but he was finally calming down and looking like he was going to collapse on his feet, so he followed his father out of the building and down to the cruiser.

“So, what was that?” he asked once they were on the road again.

“Laura and Derek Hale,” his father said. “I don’t know if you remember them.”

“The Hale fire?” Stiles asked. He remembered hearing about the fire, a girl in his grade, and her entire family except for two siblings, had died when he was in junior high. “They’re the survivors?”

His dad nodded. “Derek and Laura had gone for a walk in the woods and Derek had fallen asleep while they were watching the sunset. Laura didn’t want to wake him up, so she sat with him until he’d woken up. If he hadn’t fallen asleep, they would probably have died, too. He’s suffered from severe insomnia since. Sometimes, it got so bad it led to bouts of confusion, paranoia, and terror. Those bouts usually led to violence against himself.”

Stiles wanted to smack himself for all the coffee he’d served Derek; he knew he hadn’t known the caffeine would do that to him but he still felt responsible for this latest attack. As he thought over what his dad had told him, he had a feeling he understood what Derek was thinking. He remembered when his own mother had died, blaming himself because he’d yelled at her that day so he’d promised never to yell at anyone ever again because it might kill them. In that logic, if Derek slept, someone he cared about might die.

Sighing, he rubbed at his own eyes as his father pulled up next to his Jeep. “You alright to drive home?” he asked.

“Yeah, I got this,” Stiles said. “I’ve got to run back inside and help Mason clean up some and grab my keys. You going home now?”

His father shook his head; he was on until at least seven a.m. but they agreed to have breakfast when he got home. Stiles watched him drive away before heading into the coffee shop where Mason was leaning on the counter, flipping through a magazine. He tossed Stiles’ keys without even looking up. “See you tomorrow,” he called and Stiles laughed as he left the building.

When Stiles got home, he showered and knew he should head to bed but he got on his computer instead and started researching insomnia. His father found him asleep with his head on his keyboard and sent him to bed and they postponed their breakfast to the next night. 

Stiles woke up just in time for his shift at the coffee shop and raced out the door, noticing his father’s cruiser still in the drive as he pulled away. He got to the coffee shop and settled into his shift, the line already long and he hoped that if it kept busy the night would go quickly, but he knew that around eleven everything would slow down to nothing.

As predicted, when the clock struck eleven, it was just him and one other customer, a young woman that spent many nights on her laptop in the far corner of the shop; he suspected that she was writing fanfiction by the way she looked up with a flushed face every time Stiles asked if she wanted a refill. He wanted to assure her there was nothing wrong with it but didn’t want to come across as a complete creep, so he stayed quietly at the counter reading the newest Stephen King novel.

The bells above the door jangled and he looked up to find Derek standing in the doorway clean-shaven and looking more rested but completely unsure. Stiles opened his mouth to tell him they were closed but stopped himself at the last minute, something in his eyes telling him that the joke would not go over well.

“Hi, Derek,” he tried again, smiling at him as he moved slowly towards the counter, the door closing behind him and the girl watching from her corner, hands frozen over her keyboard.

“Hi, Stiles,” he said, his voice quiet when he reached the counter. “Can I have a chamomile tea, please?” 

Stiles grinned and nodded. “That I can give you.” He turned and grabbed a to-go cup.

“Can I get a mug? And maybe have you join me for a few minutes?” He was looking at his feet but Stiles could just make out his words.

“Well, I’m terribly busy,” he said, winking when Derek looked up at him and around the nearly empty shop. “Just grab a spot and give me a minute.” 

He nodded and headed over to one of the couches set up next to the wall of windows at the front of the shop. He rubbed his hands over his thighs as he sat, eyes on the glass and the cars driving past, their headlights sparkling against the light rain that had started to fall. 

Stiles hesitated before sitting down next to him and handing over one of the mugs in his hands while he wrapped his hands around his own mug of decaf coffee. “So, did you get some sleep?” Stiles asked.

“I did. Laura gave me my meds last night and put me to bed. When I woke up this afternoon, she told me what happened last night.” He took a sip of his tea and Stiles wanted to reach out and run a finger over the tip of his ears to see if they were as warm as they looked beneath his embarrassment. “I’m sorry for my behavior.”

“Apology unnecessary, but accepted,” Stiles told him. “My father reminded me of who you were. I went to school with Cora.” Derek frowned. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

“No, it’s alright,” Derek said. “My therapist said it’s good to talk about them, but it’s hard sometimes.”

“Mine said the same thing about my mom,” Stiles offered and they smiled into their mugs before talking some more about their shared therapy experiences. 

Soon, they were laughing and Stiles was getting to his feet to refill their mugs. He asked writer-girl if she wanted anything and she shook her head as her fingers flew over the keys of her keyboard, eyes focused. Stiles gave her a refill anyway and she was already drinking it before he’d returned to the couch where Derek was looking much more relaxed. In fact, he looked like he was on the verge of sleep.

“Did you take your meds tonight?” Stiles asked, hoping he wasn’t overstepping.

“I did,” Derek said, yawning and rubbing at his cheeks with both hands before taking his mug from Stiles. “It’s why I don’t drive at night, luckily your shop is close to my apartment.”

“And here I thought you just liked the cute barista,” Stiles quipped just as Derek took a sip of his tea and then burst out laughing when he spit it out all over the table in front of them. “I see that Laura didn’t tell you  _ everything _ that happened last night.”

Derek rubbed a hand over his eyes. “I was hoping I’d hallucinated that.”

“Well, if you’re seeing a cute barista, then it’s definitely a hallucination,” Stiles told him, grinning when Derek dropped his hand.

“Hey!” Derek called and Stiles looked over his shoulder to see who Derek was calling out to. “You on the laptop.” The girl looked up, face flushing. “Do you see him?” he asked, pointing at Stiles and the girl nodded slowly as she closed her laptop, keeping her eyes on them both as she hurriedly gathered her stuff and backed out of the shop.

“She sees you, too, so not a hallucination,” Derek said, smiling.

“You think you’re funny, don’t you?” Stiles asked, shaking his head and trying not to combust from the roundabout compliment. 

“When I’ve had enough sleep,” Derek said. “So, do you work every night?”

“Normally, I work days but our overnight guy quit without notice so I’ve been helping out,” Stiles explained. “I’m just lucky classes are done for the summer or I’d never get any sleep either. I’m off for the next couple of days, though, and I can’t wait.”

“Big plans?” Derek asked, corners of his lips turning down. 

“Not being here.”

Derek chuckled. “You think you’re so funny, don’t you?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely,” he responded, jumping to his feet when the bells jangled and he turned to find Laura standing in the doorway. 

“You did not give him coffee,” she said, frowning.

“No, I did not,” Stiles responded. “Can I get you some?” She shook her head and moved to the chair next to the couch, sitting down and putting a hand on Derek’s knee.

“You alright?” she asked, taking his mug and sipping it before returning it with a small smile. 

“I was fine,” he muttered as Stiles sat back, carrying a plate full of pastries and setting it on the table between them. 

“Was?” she asked and Stiles saw the concern in her eyes again as he looked at Derek who gave her a wide-eyed look and jerked his head a bit. Laura looked at Stiles and then back to Derek. “Oh. Oh! OH!” She jumped to her feet, grabbing the almond bear claw off the plate and hurrying towards the door. “It was nice seeing you again, Stiles,” she said, her voice trailing away as the door closed behind her.

“Is she always so strange?” Stiles asked, biting into a chocolate-dipped biscotti.

“I give her a lot to worry about,” Derek said. “I’m not an...easy person to be around.”

Stiles shrugged. “You’re not so bad,” he said.

“Not-so-bad enough to go on a date with?” he asked, voice rushed and mostly said around a bite of blueberry tart.

“I think that could be arranged,” Stiles responded, rising to his feet as the bells sounded again. “After you get some more sleep.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone and handing it over. “Put your number in and I’ll text you tomorrow.”

Derek did and handed his phone back before heading towards the door, glancing back at Stiles over his shoulder. Stiles raised a hand in a wave and turned his attention to the young couple at the counter, taking their order. When they’d collected their drinks and left the shop, Stiles pulled his phone out and started a text to Derek.

His thumbs hovered over the screen as he tried to figure out what to say just so that Derek would have his number to text him when he woke up. He could be funny or a smart ass or to the point, but he finally decided to be simple.

_ Sweet Dreams, Derek. _

**Author's Note:**

> Come say 'hi' on tumblr. I'm 'josjournal' over there.


End file.
